Today's Television

Television signals were originally transmitted exclusively via land-based transmitters. Television genres include a broad range of programming types that entertain, inform, and educate viewers. Television genres that aim to educate and inform viewers include educational shows, DIY programs on cooking, gardening, or home renovation, history shows, performing arts programs, and documentaries.

Video

The word is derived from mixed Latin and Greek roots, meaning "far sight": Greek tele , far, and Latin vision, sight (from video, vis- to see). Since the 1970s, video recordings on VCR tapes and later, digital playback systems such as DVDs, have enabled the television to be used to view recorded movies and other programs. A television may be built to receive different broadcast or video formats, such as high-definition television (HDTV). This is the electrical signal representing the visual image, and may be from a camera in the case of live images, a video tape recorder for playback of recorded images, or a film chain-telecine-flying spot scanner for transmission of motion pictures (films). This is an electrical signal from a microphone or from the audio output of a video tape recorder or motion picture film scanner.

Practical television systems include equipment for selecting different image sources, mixing images from several sources at once, insertion of pre-recorded video signals, synchronizing signals from many sources, and direct image generation by computer for such purposes as station identification. A variation is a video projector, using similar technology, which projects onto a screen. LED technology has become one of the choices for outdoor video and stadium uses, since the advent of bright LEDs and driver circuits. LEDs enable scalable ultra-large flat panel video displays that other technologies may never be able to match in performance. TV systems in most countries relay the video as an AM (amplitude-modulation) signal and the sound as a FM (frequency-modulation) signal. Today there are many television add-ons including video game consoles, VCRs, Set-top boxes for Cable, Satellite and DVB-T compliant Digital Television reception, DVD players, or Digital Video Recorders (including personal video recorders, PVRs).

Digital

Digital systems may be inserted anywhere in the chain to provide better image transmission quality, reduction in transmission bandwidth, special effects, or security of transmission from reception by non-subscribers. The affordability and convenience of digital satellite reception has led to the proliferation of small dish antennas outside many houses and apartments. A home today might have the choice of receiving analog or HDTV over the air, analog or digital cable with HDTV from a cable television company over coaxial cable, or even from the phone company over fiber optic lines.

Television genres that aim to educate and inform viewers include educational shows, DIY programs on cooking, gardening, or home renovation, history shows, performing arts programs, and documentaries. Television service providers also offer video on demand, a set of programs which could be watched at any time. Television and Young People (TVYP) is the UK's leading forum for young people aspiring to work in television.